Half-life: the other half
by sainthax
Summary: Also involves portal, which kinda falls under half-life. Maybe a bit of parody later in.
1. Chapter 1

The four men gathered in the forest.  
"If you think about it, we're really similar to Black Mesa." The first of them said. "We have our own resistance group, our own four scientists. And we all work for one of the greatest science facilities of all time!"  
"May I remind you that we no longer work for aperture. Also, we're better. Black Mesa filled this world with strange creatures. Doctor Breen actually was dictator of earth. We created a pass for the most creative Turing test variations ever."  
"No, Doug. We're not better until we have our own Gordon Freeman. Until then, we're nobody. Unless you know something we do not?"  
"What, do you expect less from me?"

If they knew they were being watched, they would have kept their voices down. Not that it would have made a difference, it would have just happened on instinct.  
"Oh, Doug. You have changed so much... and yet so little. I will soon be mee-ting with your mystery hero. Maybe you will soon meet mine?" Their spectator whispered and left. When he met whoever this hero was, anything could happen.


	2. Chapter 2

Barney had just arrived at White Forest. Gordon was worried. He didn't want Barney to have to see Alyx like this. Not so soon after...  
His thoughts trailed off. Eli's dead now. He realised. He's gone.  
If it hadn't been for that sample arriving at Black Mesa, none of this would've happened. But who delivered the sample? And why would they have been so careless with substances? What did it all mean?  
The more Gordon thought, the more concerned he became. He knew a person who could help him, but how could he explain the situation?  
Then he remembered The Code.

Barney walked up the corridor. To say he was angry with the combine would be an understatement. One of the cascade team was dead. He had arrived too late. This series of downbeat thoughts ended when he felt a hand brush against his pocket. He turned to look, but only Gordon was there.

Gordon sat down. Now that he had Calhoun's cellphone,he could make the email. He just hoped it would be read in time.

At Black Mesa North, the message was passed on by word of mouth to its intended recipient, who immediately started asking questions.  
"Are you sure? This code hasn't been used in years!" He asked.  
"Absolutely. I don't know what it means though. Sounds more like a rushed cry for help than a code to me."  
"I thought he would have called my son. I've retired from fighting the combine, and he knows that."  
"All I said was that the message was from White Forest. I never said it was from Gordon. As a matter of fact, it was from Calhoun!"  
"It wasn't. Barney doesn't understand the code. Either Gordon typed up our little in joke, hoping I would remember, or you made this all up. Either way, I'm checking my email."  
And so he did, and there was the message:  
ALIENS AND MONSTERS ARE ATTACKING MY PLACE. HELP ME BRO!


	3. Chapter 3

John and Henry Freeman drove toward White Forest, road safety being the least of their concern. The G-man watched from a distance before getting out his cellphone. He dialled a number and held it to his ear.  
"Hello?" Came a voice from the other end.  
"Ah, Grigori." The G-man replied. "Do people still call you Rasputin, or have you hidden your identity?"  
Father Grigori ignored the question. "I've found another potential employee. Well, eighteen of them to be exact. They were locked in an eternal war in a plan to distract and protect the planet's strongest warriors from the combine."  
"A well thought out plan, I must say. Who devised it?"  
"Zephaniah Mann."  
"How is he, the old fool?" The G-man asked most informally.  
"Long dead."  
This came as quite a disappointment.  
"Well, then." The G-man continued. "Gordon has both a brother and an Aperture Science counterpart. The brother is John Freeman. When their parents divorced, John moved to French-speaking Canada with his mother. He spoke very little English until the resistance made it compulsory for communication with Vortigaunts. Has a son named Henry. Had a wife until... I'll just say the combine have caused grief to all. The AS counterpart I know nothing about."

"Hello? Are you listening? It's important!"  
The RED spy's Ap Sap had been trying to grab the attention of the spy himself for an hour and a half. "Helloooooo? It's interesting! You'll like it!"  
The RED spy was quaking at the knees. He was getting more and more annoyed by the minute. "What?! What eez it?!" He finally shouted.  
"Oh, nothing much, now that I think about it. It's just, intelligence deafening spheres like me were given away because our previous semi-robotic owner had developed a phobia after one had gone rogue and caused her obscure torture only to have shot him into space with a world-changing technological hyperdimensional tool along with an astronomy Baffin robot and an adventure ready bigmouth robot, as well as the tool that got them there in the first place and they've confirmed their landing site they will reach in a few days."  
"Oh." The spy replied. "I suppose we should get going zen?"  
"I SAPpose we should too!" The Ap Sap laughed at his own joke. At twelve o'clock that night, they left for west Siberia.


	4. Chapter 4

Chell was tired of walking. She had been walking for a week now, only stopping at deserted houses to acquire food and water. She thought back to the map she had seen in one of the houses. All she knew about this unfamiliar world she had calculated was twenty years from her last experience of reality, was that she had to reach White Forest. She had been keeping track of how far she must be from this place, and it was only about half a mile fro-  
A funeral was not what she expected her first view of humanity to be, but it was. The people present were there in memory of a certain Dr Eli Vance. A wiry bald man with large glasses was speaking.  
"Of all the people I remember in my life, Eli was quite possibly the most memorable. If I have to say anything about him, it is that I hope he died doing what he loved."  
An angry looking man with a grey suit leaned over and whispered into the speaker's ear. "Oh my." The speech started again. "I've just been informed by Arne that a combine advisor ate him inside out. I'm sure he wouldn't have enjoyed that at all."  
Chell decided she should probably move around the funeral and find another way in.

When Chell entered the building itself, she found there was absolutely nobody else there. Not even anybody to account for the voice calling to her.  
"Hello there, whatever your name may be." Chell looked around for a source of the voice, but found none.  
"Oh, of course. You haven't seen me before." Suddenly, an abstract-looking man in a suit and tie appeared before her. "Now, let's get down to business. Name?"  
"Chell."  
"Full name?" He frowned this time.  
"I... I don't kn..." Chell's confusion lifted itself from her head. "Michelle C Johnson. I don't know how I know that, but..."  
"If that appears to be the case, I would recommend some sleep." The mysterious man interrupted. He grinned evilly, and then vanished.

Chell awoke with a start. A gathering of three people surrounded the bed she was in, in a room she had seen earlier in the building. She wasn't aware she'd been sleeping, which was weird. The first of the people surrounding her cried for joy. "She's awake!" He shouted. He was a fairly young man, about sixteen years old. He wore a turquoise beanie, like most others in the area, as well as the uniform lambda armband. The second person ran over with an air-sickness bag, which was filled with ease. She was in her early twenties, with dark hair and a cut across her forehead. She wore a brown jacket with a familiar symbol on it. The third stood in the doorway, staring at Chell perplexedly. He wore a hazard suit with a golden lambda on the nape of the neck. He wore thin glasses and had a large brown beard. He walked over and bent down quickly trading looks with the girl next to him. The girl looked straight at Chell and asked, "What happened to your train that caused it to take so long?"  
Chell didn't know what to say.  
"Ok. Let's go back a step. Did you know City 17 blew up?" The girl asked.  
Chell still remained confused.  
"Let's put it this way. I'm Alyx Vance and this is Dr Gordon Freeman. How many years have you been living under a rock for?"  
"At best guess, twenty years." Chell answered as impolitely as she could. She obviously wasn't very good at doing so. If GLaDOS had been given the job of giving such insults, Chell thought, everybody else would be crying in the corner.  
Alyx interrupted this chain of thought and explained everything that had happened in the past twenty years. Along the way, Chell had noticed that the logo on Alyx's jacket was that of Black Mesa. Thinking quickly, Chell hid the Aperture logo on the shirt under the bed covers.

"Are you sure she's the one?"  
"Positive."  
"Well, get down from there. You've been watching her for ten minutes. We all want a turn."  
"Okay then, no need to get upset so shortly into our mission."  
"DOUG! This is serious. Now get down and hand me the binoculars."


	5. Chapter 5

Christian Mundy was tired.  
He had been driving for six hours now, his only source of navigation being a partly defective intelligence core, his only transportation a cramped family van. He wasn't used to staying on the move. He was used to sitting still, aiming his sniper rifle. Still, he couldn't complain that his team was going to save the world again. RED had already defeated evil wizards and armies of robots. How hard could an alien empire be?

D0g was confused. He had patiently been waiting for Judith to return, but couldn't find anything. Alyx told him that they would have to go find her. It disheartened D0g to know that there was something he didn't know. He would just have to find out.

Doug and his associates trudged through the remains of City 17. He was going to remark that a neutron bomb was going to be safer and more efficient, but he reminded himself that one had already gone off around here. "We have to get into the Citadel!" One of Doug's comrades (was it Lazarus?) remarked. Another (pretty certain it was Jacob) nodded. The four of them broke into the Citadel without a moment's hesitation. This was something that they would come to regret.

GLaDOS had become disheartened at the fact Caroline had been deleted. She had felt several things in her time: anger, mercy, glee, but never loneliness. Now that she had deleted Caroline...  
That was when it hit her. "Backup Administration Intelligence Core!" She called.  
"All systems active; core corruption at 9%." It replied.  
"That's irrelevant to what I wanted to ask you. Would it be possible to make intelligence records from remains of previous records?"  
"Theoretically yes, but even your most talented test subjects couldn't reach the file room."  
"Alright then, send in the best possible third member of Atlas and P-body's team."  
"Request completed."

Adrian Shepard stood up for the first time in who-knows-how-long. The G-man had given him the same job as last time, to kill. The only difference was that this time, he was to kill anyone trying to use the Borealis.

List of factions (shown every five chapters)  
Resistance: Gordon, Alyx, Isaac, Arne, John, Henry, D0g  
?: G-man, Adrian, Grigori  
Aperture: GLaDOS, Atlas, P-body  
?2: Doug, Lazarus, Jacob, ?  
RED: Scout, Soldier, Pyro, Demo, Heavy, Engie, Medic, Sniper, Spy, Ap Sap


	6. Chapter 6

Back at White Forest, Chell was just starting to get used to the place. She had her own room (But no roommate besides the Aperture Science Weighted Companion Cube), her own SMG, heck, she even had her own job as an engineer, something she found she did well. As she was sitting down to dinner, she thought about how much she missed Wheatley, GLaDOS, even Rick the adventure sphere. She knew she couldn't do anything about it, though. She had a new life now, with new people and a new job, she thought.  
She was wrong.

Wheatley, the space sphere, the adventure sphere and the ASHPD were flying towards earth at a speed. A speed that would be best described as 'very fast'.  
"Look, I can calculate a speed, you know!" Wheatley screamed through his in-built radio system.  
"Nooooooo!" Replied the space sphere. "The planet we're reaching is orbiting a sun which is revolving through a galaxy which is hurtling around spaaaaaace! And we never got to see it all!"  
"Rick! Are you willing to pay attention to me?!" Wheatley asked.  
"Bah babah bah bah bah bah bah! Playin' by our own rules! Hangin' by our fingers from a mountain! Bah babah bah bah bah bah bah bah!" It was clear that nobody was paying attention at all. It was in this moment, and this moment only, that Wheatley understood space in all its grand size and majesty. He recalled a quote from his top ten 'not a moron' books:  
"Space is big. Really big. I mean, you won't understand just how mindbogglingly big it is. You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's peanuts to space."  
But what will disappoint Wheatley the most in the next few chapters is that the book he found this quote in was inaccurate because earth had not been blown up, but conquered.

Alyx woke with a start. She had had a weird dream, well not so much a dream as a memory. She had been separated from her parents at Black Mesa. She had originally thought that this was Gordon, but in her dream her saviour wore a suit and tie. Then she remembered Wallace Breen saying something about Gordon's contract. Then she remembered her being told to tell her father "Prepare for unforeseen consequences". She knew she wasn't going to get back to sleep now. She stood up to get a glass of water, but found a sticky note on her door reading 'Your father's death was most unfortunate. My warning came too late.' Alyx kept the message on her bedside table, only to find it was gone in the morning. She didn't dare tell anyone this time.

Judith Mossman grew more and more weary with each day. The fact that each of her fellow explorers had been killed by hunters made things worse, but she didn't dare panic and use up valuable heartbeats. She must be nearing the Borealis by now. She couldn't go much further than she already had and she didn't deserve to die with her mission incomplete. She was better than she was before. She was a good person. She was... Definitely going to die.

Wallace Breen couldn't understand how he was still alive. He had felt something crawl up his back and opened his eyes to see what it was. Did he finally attain his host body? Was he finally in the otherworld he had been promised? No. He was still on earth, with some form of life support on his crawling between his shoulder blades. He saw another man standing over him, sporting a much more professional medical device on his back.  
"Who are you?" Breen asked impatiently.  
"I am Gray Mann, and I believe I deserve more respect after saving your life." The other man spoke back.  
"How did you get in here?"  
"I reported a much more serious break-in to your soldiers."  
"Impossible. The Citadel has never had two infiltrations at once!"  
"Allow me to prove it then." Gray Mann left the room which, upon closer inspection, Breen realised was not his office nor the fusion reactor. Gray Mann returned with some stalkers, four in total, each carrying a captive that looked very much like a resistance soldier.  
"Who might you be?" Breen asked the one who was squirming the least.  
"Doug." The smartass replied.  
"A first name does not give away your identity." Breen frowned.  
Doug had waited for this reply. Using Breen's disappointment to blind him from the gravity of the situation, Doug kicked Breen in the shin. At this moment, each of the other captives dropped something that the stalkers couldn't resist studying. All four of the prisoners used this distraction to escape.  
"Run!" Doug called to the two old men, who for some reason did as they were told. "Run and fear the name Doug Rattmann!"  
The object each stalker was observing was a slightly overripe lemon.


	7. Chapter 7

Erik Wolpaw and Robin Walker had been arguing for many hours now. One side was battling for episode three, the other for the perfect team fortress 2 update. One for good, the other for something that was okay, I guess. Eventually, a third figure rose from what appeared to be thin air. Eventually he spoke, in a voice like a choir of angels. "Robin! This hath continued for a period of time all agree be long enough! And, by the power of valve within me, thou shalt face my Knives of GabeN!" This third guy who was obviously Gabe Newell, geez guys, how could you not work that out, killed Robin with a pretty legendary knife. As he died, everybody saw a message reading:  
Robin has found: Episode 3!

So our story can continue.

Chell looked around the helicopter she was in, and at the others in it. Alyx was piloting, Gordon was also in the front and the only one accompanying her was a socially awkward security guard. This was not what was normally pictured to accompany the phrase 'crack team of (insert profession here). It was too late to back out now, though. The jet-black craft was about 100 metres over the ruins of City 17. Chell looked outside the window just in time to see a lemon-scented shockwave tear down what was left of the central citadel. She chortled at the great speech this reminded her of. "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade". That speech might have been what inspired her to escape from Aperture Science.  
She was so caught up in her own thoughts, she barely even noticed the helicopter land. There was a mechanic outside, waiting for the helicopter to land. He was in his early fifties, and completely cleanshaven. He quickly dove underneath the engine hatch and pegan to pry it apart with his bare hands. "We hurd you were haveenk engeen problems and acteevated radar beacon." He spoke with a booming Russian accent. "Anyway welkolme back to lighthouse point, Gordon. I don't have a spare laser-guided rockett thees time, but I weel reward you eef you can defend us from a few eencomeeng Cormbaines." As if on cue, a dozen or so combine soldiers came over the west hill. Everybody readied their weapons, besides Gordon who only had his gravity gun and Chell who was still daydreaming. Chell was brought back to reality a moment later by the sound of gunfire and immediately leaped out of her seat and into the chaos of battle.


	8. Chapter 8

Barney was honestly impressed by Chell's fighting skills. Most of the time, instead of using her SMG, she would just kick them. At first this might not seem like much, but she was wearing those things on her legs. Whatever they were, they caused the soldiers to take four times the impact the would normally expect. Once they were on the ground, they would face a certain death that Barney wouldn't have liked to describe, but made him realise how mountainous the surrounding area was. When only three soldiers remained, however, the strangest thing happened. A humanoid robot appeared. It had a brown leather hat, glowing blue eyes and a badly painted sniper rifle. It fired a bullet that narrowly missed Gordon's face and landed in the lighthouse behind him. Gordon retaliated instinctively and pulled the robot closer with the gravity gun. From there, he released the zero point energy field he had built up and blew the robot's head off. Alyx and Barney looked up from this impressive feat to find that Chell had killed the remaining combines. Everybody felt sorry that nobody was around and watching Chell's first successful mission. Eventually, their mechanic stood up. "Well, Gordon, I promeesed you a reword and I em troo to what I say." He spoke. Gordon felt giddy with delight as he was handed a crobar. "Thanks n' all, but we really gotta get going.' Alyx replied.

"Ooh, hello!" Wheatley shouted loudly to the other intelligence deafening sphere. "Welcome back to earth, mate!" The other replied. "How was space?"  
"Fairly mindbending, I have to say. Did cure one of my pals from his astrophilia, though. Now, everybody." He spoke to address the RED team. "We're looking for a gun that makes things teleport. About this long." Wheatley realised he couldn't gesture to indicate length and shut up.  
Dell Conagher thought of how handy this gun would be for his engineering problems. Practical problems, as he called them. He would need an excuse to use it, but all he felt he needed right now was a way to melt all this goddamn snow.  
Tavish Degroot had decided simply to blow the snow up. In doing so, he discovered another personality core thanking Tavish for making something explode for once. "And showing me that helicopter." He said. It wasn't a false alarm, either.  
There was actually a helicopter.


	9. Chapter 9

"Hey, boss! I found a crow! Isn't it a bit lost?" Grigori called.  
The G-man stared around using his binoculars. "Well, seeing as we (hhchhch) are in the cen-tre of the pac-ific ocean, I would say sooo."  
Father Grigori set up the video camera he had brought along. "I've done the calculations, sir. Our transmission will spread through time and space."  
Several events happened at the same time. The G-man's cellphone received a call that wasn't answered, the video camera activated, the caller was found by the Combine and the camera's radio transmission began. The transmission shot forward in time towards the Citadel's Xen portal just as the vortex of the portal inverted, propelling the transmission back in time.

Three days earlier, Gordon stormed through an apartment on his quest to murder Wallace Breen. The building started falling apart and a small portion of a wall collapsed. Gordon crouched and rolled into a room that the damage revealed. In the room was an unplugged television with the transmission playing backwards upon it, repeating one message.  
"?em raeh uoy nac !nam-G !noitnettA"

The G-man answered the call. "Talk to me." He spoke.  
"Hello there. Helen speaking."  
"Who?" The G-man enquired.  
"Spokesperson for Mann Co."  
"Ah, yes. What, may I ask, is the prob-lem?"  
"Saxton Hale has been arrested. We nee-"  
"May I suggest a cro-bar?" The G-man laughed and hung up.


	10. Chapter 10

Henry Freeman laughed maniac, using high unstable Dark Energy Field Maniplater and Magnusson's bomb generatort o plant the large silver metal spheres on stiders' bodies. There was stragne pattern to it. Plant the bomb and wait. Plant the bomb and wait. Once bombs was planted his father shoot them real quick with wepon. All them explod eand striders gets deaded. Soon his father was walk inside base. "Arne we are done!" He sayed to scietist who be called Arne Magnusson. Henry nod and smild. Everyone were happy becaus striders aren't evil no more because they deaded of John and Henry and a bit Arne. It was good day but then wrong! "It couldn't possibly be done that easily. What happened to the hunters? Why weren't they out there? Normally they assist in crushing us!" Arne reply perfectly in English. Henry not know what wrong with Henry's think grammar but something. Also not now because mystery solved not yet but soon maybe.

Well, they may not have known it, but the mystery was trying to solve them.  
Beneath the ground, a few miles north, a high-security fort lied. This was the base of the Survivors, Aperture's take on the Resistance. Out of the four scientists who infiltrated the Citadel, only two remained. These two were Doug and a fellow physicist who assured Doug that his name was Oscar. The other two had died of their wounds in an intense battle with hunters on their way south. "Why were they headed south?" Oscar's handmade Inspiration Core asked. Doug nodded at both Oscar and the core. "Good question." He mused. Oscar thought for a moment. "Let me check the frequencies of nearby radio towers. That should be able to help us." He answered finally. They checked through five or so before finally coming to what was the White Forest radio frequency. The other end picked up.  
"Hello, hello, who is this?" There was nobody to accompany the voice that had spoken; the videophone screen was covered with static.  
"This is white forest, the old missile silo, no?" Oscar called back.  
"Why yes. Who am I speaking to?" The static cleared, revealing a man in his early fifties, with a clean-shaven and slightly chubby face.  
"We're part of the old Aperture Science team. Despite our appearances, we're actually in our seventies, but ah, the magic of cryogenics."  
"Oh, hello. I didn't know we had a caller, Arnie." Another man appeared on the screen. He was bald and wore large glasses too big for his ears.  
"Whoa, wait! I recognise you!" Doug shouted. "Isaac Kleiner!"  
"Doug Rattmann! You haven't changed since you graduated from Harvard!"  
"Back to business. We need to destroy the Borealis, remember?" Magnusson interrupted.  
Suddenly the screen went dark and was replaced by a view of the Aperture Science Computer Aided Enrichment Centre Panel Based Central Semi Artificial Intelligence Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System Chamber (now with 85% more panel). "How typical of a Black Mesa scientist." The cynical voice of GLaDOS reverberated. "Every time we accomplish something you just want to tear it down. Well I'm better than you!"  
"At what, exactly?" Isaac inquired in his sexiest pep talk voice. Nobody in their right mind messed with sexy pep talk Kleiner.  
GLaDOS was not in her right mind. "Portal technology, scientific discovery, coming up with painfully long acronyms. Remember, I'm in the ASCAECP-BCS-AIGLaDOSC."  
"Well we're in the... The..." Isaac's mind was racing. "The City Seventeen Area Outskirts Black Mesa Based Anti Combine Group better known as the Resistance Recovered White Forest Missile Silo Based-"  
"If you can beat my acronym I'll spare your lives."  
"Gordon Freeman Worshipping Vortigaunt Tolerating Population. CSAOBMBACGbkatRRWFMSBGFWVTP."  
"Okay, you're worthy, but surely you don't have to blow the Borealis up?"  
"Actually there might be another way..."


	11. Chapter 11

First off, before reading this chapter, read the HL/P fanfic 'want it done'.

The train finally pulled into the station.  
"Should ve dispose of ze bodies?" The medic asked. The heavy threw them out the window. The bodies were those of two elites, limbs splayed in awkward positions and large finger gun wounds from their conflict with the heavy. Everybody left the train as stealthily as possible and decided that it would be best if the group split up. Gordon and the pyro didn't get to vote on the topic for obvious reasons, but it wasn't really open for discussion. Gordon left by some sort of corridor, but thinking back he couldn't remember which. He came to a large room with a revolver placed 'inconspicuously' on the floor. He went to pick it up but felt something sharp hit the back of his neck. He collapsed in a heap instantly.

When he came to, a young man was watching over him. "Hello," he said, "do you realise how much I hate you?" Gordon shook his head. "You killed my idols. You stole my gravity gun. You were chosen by him and I was left to die. That's right. I can see him as well. I have spend a week or so watching your every move." Gordon tried to reach up and kill this madman, but found that he had been bound to whatever he was on. "Oh, don't struggle, Freeman. Soon it will all be over. Everything you have done to me will be forgiven soon. You will regret ever hearing the name Gordon Frohman!" Freeman gestured to indicate that he hadn't heard the name before and at that very moment a loud explosion went off, tearing down the wall. After the resulting dust cloud had cleared, Visible to both was the grim bloodied face of the demoman. Something was different about it, which I will get to later. "God!" Frohman shrieked as the demo swung a golf club, making the blow completely free of impact. Tavish retaliated by muttering the strange message "!votekick DJ seh-vun." Suddenly Freeman's ears were ringing with the sound of monotonous yet offbeat drums as everyone pressed F1. "Now," the young DeGroot said as Frohman disappeared. "Let's get yer free o those constraints."

Adrian did not join the marines to be bored. He did it for exactly the opposite of boredom. He was too bored to find the right word for it, he was so bored. He had watched over the Borealis for a day now and nothing was happening, when suddenly  
"Lovely view, isnit?"  
"What!?" Adrian shouted. He looked up to see a tall wiry man with a wide brim hat and three bullets in his vest pocket.  
"Real shame it's a fake, though."  
Adrian stood up, absolutely furious. "I have been watching this ship for twenty hours, and you think you have the authority to come in here and say my job is pointless?"  
The other man who is obviously the sniper lowered and eyebrow. "I wouldn't say pointlessssss..." He toyed with the idea. "Yes, I'd say pointless. Watch my trusty..." Adrian's attention was suddenly caught. What was it this man had that he would describe as trusty? The answer disappointed him greatly. "Piss." The sniper pulled out his trademark piss and threw it at the ship. The view of the ship went hazy and was replaced with a small prison cell containing...

To be continued, maggots!


	12. Chapter 12

Gordon heard the last voice he had ever wanted to hear. The overwatch.  
"Attention: Anticitizen One and Black Scottish Cyclops located in sector B. Anticitizen Two located in sector O. Sun Tzu and unidentifiable anticitizen located in sector A. Announcer, The Jarate Kid, HECU assassin and Beast Fighter located in sector F. Vance Suprime and Pendleton Suprime in T. Force of nature and Dime a dozen scumbag in E. Several others on the move. Prioritise. Compromise. Sterilise." This was not good. They'd been located and couldn't get to each other. Unless...  
Gordon walked over to a suit recharger. This was going to take a while.

Private Evan had only recently become a combine soldier. He had spent many years as a CP, but he wasn't like the others from there. He was hilarious, always the life of the party. They said even the emotion-cleansed Elites laughed at his jokes, and now he had been given the chance to shine on the field. Accompanied by two other soldiers, he was sent to sector B. The three of them rounded the corner and found their targets.  
"Sty rght whr y r. Ny sgn f hstl mvmnt wll rslt n dth." Evan called.  
Gordon pulled out a grenade. The soldiers fretted. They were all aware that their minds had been rendered incapable of surrender and that there was no condition in which they could survive now. The grenade rolled across the room and Evan's colleagues ran. Evan himself, however, started crying because he had gone rigid with shock for a moment, and he knew that meant he no longer had time to get away. He forced himself to ignore the suppression in his mind and actually begged for mercy on his knees. Gordon shook his head. Tavish was about as casual, witty and wise as his best friend Eli, and he wasn't about to leave him unprotected now that they were enjoying each other's presence. Evan thought of his family. They had tried to kill him when he became a Combine, but he loved them. His hunter he had found as a larva, cold and wounded. All of his friends, who laughed at the most abstract of jokes. All of them losing connections with each other in the web of life, as his strings were torn out. The other soldiers were shocked at the loss of the greatest man to join their army. Gordon was about to swing his crobar at them, when the one closest to him blocked it and told of the story Gordon had ended. Gordon couldn't believe how he could have done such a thing. Tavish, on the other hand...  
"Yer bring in beasties from other worlds, massacre BILLIONS, commit slow genocide wit yer fancy suppression field, enslave and even mutate the survivors and yer blame us fer one little death?" His nostrils were flaring from rage.  
"He was... Different." The Combine explained.  
"The shape o' yer ass might be different, too, one I kick it!" The Demoman pulled out a loch-n-load and dispatched of the soldiers.  
For Gordon, it was thrice the pain of before. For Tavish, it was two more bodies for the pile.


	13. Chapter 13

This is the story of a man named Sta-  
Hm. Let's leave the Stanley Parable for later. Breen looked about his new host body. It was flawless. He was better in every way now, except that he was an advisor, a Shu'ulathoi, a flying cybernetic kidney bean. Despite all this, he knew it was for the best and that he should continue. Now he was going to eat the Freeman.

Mossman was becoming tired of testing. She had no idea as to what GLaDOS wanted from her. She had been going for five hours now, and she hadn't learned anything. Too many variables. Bendy, on the other hand, seemed to get stronger, as if proximity to test completion energised him. He was a perpetual testing machine, designed for a perpetual testing initiative. He cost all of his Aperture's budget. His day would never come. He would last for the rest of time. She wouldn't. She had enjoyed herself throughout her life, but a sentient being has temporal limits, especially an old one.  
She sighed to herself. She had been so close to the ship, but, as Zeno had expressed in his famous paradox, she would never make it.

Gordon had rejoined the rest of the group in some wing of the Combine station, thrown his gravity gun at Shepard, and listened to what people had to say.  
"There's a radio just up ahead." Alyx explained. "Maybe we can get through to White Forest." Sure enough, thanks to valve's inconspicuous patterns in the storyline, they could.  
"Hello? Hello? This is Alyx speaking. Do you read?" Odessa inquired (joking - Alyx said it).  
"Ooh. Maybe she's over here." Kleiner's partially confused voice comforted the present members of the resistance. "Oh, I'm sorry, it just seems that, according to our scanners, we launched Lamarr into space, as well as some garden gnome. Thankfully the soulless ornament has been destroyed, but," Gordon raised his pistol to his head. He had worked so hard to launch the damn thing. Now it was gone. He fired, but he survived because he was on full health, "but, we need to get Lamarr back down!"  
"I can sympathise. I am a medic without a licence, like a hollow shell. I need my doves for inspiration, and I always carry at least one around."  
I have no idea how to finish this chapter.


End file.
